


Not for One Second

by thesignsofserbia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Case Fic, Drug Use, Greg Lestrade & Sherlock Holmes Friendship, John is pissed, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Poor Lestrade, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock Is Not Okay, don't mess with Sherlock, everyone is a rabbit of negative euphoria, he may be on the side of the angels..., no one is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesignsofserbia/pseuds/thesignsofserbia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one complained, this case was different, hitting closer to home. After all, John Watson had been well liked by all the officers on the force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not for One Second

**Author's Note:**

> This story was a right pain in this arse and I like the title better than the story, Much Greg Lestrade appreciation, John is kidnapped, Sherlock is furious, there's some of Sherlock and Lestrade's backstory, which I love. Slightly different than my usual style of fic, enjoy.

Not for One Second

 

 

~

 

Greg Lestrade sat slumped in his office chair, running a hand over the five o’clock shadow covering his jaw. He wondered if it actually qualified as a beard yet. Groaning in acknowledgement of his burgeoning headache, he turned his attention back to the mess of files, dead leads and miscellaneous paperwork in front of him. He had barely slept in 3 days; he and his team were running on crap NSY coffee and desperation.  


No one complained though, this case was different, hitting closer to home. After all, John Watson had been well liked by all the officers on the force. Is, Greg corrected himself, John _is_ well liked.

  
A sharp rap drew his attention to Sgt Donovan in the doorway, from her expression he figured that he probably looked about as good as he felt.

  
“Anything?” Greg asked tiredly.

  
“No,” she sighed, “Not a bloody thing. Sir, we have no idea where he is.”

  
“We’ll find him.”

  
“Sir…” She trailed off, her tone doubtful.

  
“We will.” Lestrade insisted, clenching his jaw.

  
“Sir, believe me, I want him found as much as you do, but we can’t keep this up forever, _you_ can’t keep this up. Honestly, you look like shit, when was the last time you slept?” Sally asked, her voice softening.

  
Lestrade heaved a frustrated sigh in response and scrubbed the palm of his hand over his face. She was sincere, not only that; she was right, voicing what everyone was thinking but no one wanted to say, _again_.

  
“Donovan, you think I don’t know that?” He snapped, but not unkindly, “Try telling that to him,” he muttered, jabbing a thumb towards the dark figure in the corner.

  
Sally glanced at the man uncertainly, perhaps even with a hint of fear. How he was even alive was a mystery to her, but what really creeped her out wasn’t the fact that she hadn’t yet ruled out the possibility of him being an honest-to-god zombie, but how still he was; eyes shut, completely silent.

  
The only signs that he hadn’t fallen asleep (or died, can zombies die?) standing up was the constant flicker of movement behind closed eyelids, and the fact that he was holding his hands out in front of him as though he were about to conduct an orchestra.

  
She glanced back at the D.I., who was also regarding the figure that was Sherlock Holmes warily.

  
“I’ll have another look through the CCTV footage, but I doubt I’ll find anything, we’ve been through everything with a fine tooth comb.”

  
Lestrade sighed again, and tore his eyes from Sherlock’s seemingly frozen form to look at her, just a tad blearily;

  
“Thanks Sally, I appreciate it.” He really did too, despite the whole mess surrounding Sherlock’s (apparently fake) suicide; she was a damn fine officer, dedicated to her job.

  
“What are you going to tell him?” She asked and Lestrade was somewhat surprised to see genuine concern in her eyes, but, then again that could be for him; god knew how Sherlock would react when he eventually had to tell him that they were calling off the search -at least for now- and worse; try to get him to rest.

  
Greg just looked at her and shook his head, at a loss.

  
“He’s not going to stop, is he?” But it wasn’t really a question, “Not until Dr Watson’s safe or he runs himself into the ground.”

  
There was no love lost between the pair, but before she left, Greg did catch a flicker of what just might have been respect.

 

~

 

Greg took the opportunity to observe the man he had once thought of as a sort of, not-quite, adopted son.

  
When he had first met a young Sherlock Holmes it had been at a crime scene, in a dodgy part of town. A junkie had been poisoned in, as it turned out, the same drug den that Sherlock liked to frequent.  
Of course by the time Lestrade got on the scene, still just a detective-sergeant, Sherlock had solved the case and was being restrained and arrested for possession of a class A drug, drug use, and waste of police time. He was also shouting abuse at several officers for being ‘complete idiots’ and not seeing what was ‘right in front of your fucking faces’, clearly high as a kite, manic and furious.

  
Lestrade was curious about the kid; he sounded posh and seemed different somehow from the regular coke-heads they saw day in, day out. He was far more coherent for a start.

  
Eventually Greg had heard him out and convinced the other officers to listen to the kid, who had not only proven that the junkie had been murdered (the D.I. on duty had ruled it as an accidental overdose on tainted cocaine) but as a result of the information Sherlock had given them, they uncovered a minor drug syndicate and successfully brought them down.

  
Sherlock had waved his involvement away airily;  
' _It was impure shit anyway.’_

  
 After that, Sherlock started turning up randomly at crime scenes when he felt like it, cold and aloof, he would solve the case in a matter of minutes and then vanish back into the city. He only ever turned up at the scenes where Greg was on duty, and occasionally Greg brought him cold cases from other departments.

  
Lestrade had been uncomfortable about the uncertainty regarding Sherlock’s continued substance abuse, but willing to turn a blind eye because he needed the help.

  
That was, until Sherlock overdosed on speedball.

  
He knew he would never the night he found Sherlock, cold as ice, collapsed on his living room floor at that dump of a flat on Montague Street. It had taken so long for him to find a pulse that he’d been convinced that he was dead. He hated to think how long Sherlock had been lying there; dying, or how long it would have taken someone to notice that he was even missing.

  
He hadn’t seen Sherlock for a month after that and he’d feared the worst.

  
He’d resorted to threatening the hospital staff until he found out that a Sherlock Holmes had been discharged and transferred to a location unknown, orders from on high apparently. No one would tell him where Sherlock actually was and he received a pretty serious looking letter (Mycroft hadn’t yet established the full extent of his power) telling him that he was to have nothing further to do with Sherlock Holmes.

  
That was the end of it, or so he’d thought.

  
Weeks later, Sherlock had turned up out of the blue, even more dangerously thin than usual and in a terribly bad mood.

  
Lestrade later found out that he had been forcibly (Mycroft) checked into a rehab facility in Florida. They’d eventually been forced to relent and release him, he caused havoc amongst the other ‘residents’ and apparently he was so adept at escaping that he practically walked in and out of the place like he was at a B &B. He even worked a case while he was there, ensuring some poor sod was executed.

  
Rehab, unsurprisingly hadn’t been entirely effective for Sherlock, as it turned out.

  
After he turned up at a crime scene visibly high (sometimes he was so good at concealing it that Lestrade found it difficult to tell) Greg had given him a simply ultimatum; it was the work or the drugs, not both.

  
Of course he hadn’t expected Sherlock to go cold turkey on his own after an addiction spanning several years, though in hindsight, he probably should have. Still, he had felt a swell of pride at the fact that when in need, Sherlock Holmes thought enough of him, and trusted him enough to ask for his help.  
Firstly with hauling the man’s sweating and exhausted frame across the threshold and into Greg’s sad little flat.

  
Those two weeks that Sherlock stayed with him (newly divorced) was still one of the hardest times of Greg’s life.

  
Sherlock had been a mess and the withdrawal was excruciating, it hurt Lestrade to watch him disintegrate before his eyes, barely moving except to drag himself between the bathroom and Greg’s lumpy sofa (he’d actually ended up having to get rid of it, it was such a mess, but Mycroft had bought him a new one, it had been awful anyway).

  
But then he’d watched as Sherlock got clean, and became successful. But most of all, he watched as John Watson made him shine so much brighter whilst _somehow_ making him a better man at the same time.

 

~

 

As he contemplated Sherlock’s still form, he wondered; after two years, how much was left of the Sherlock Holmes he knew, ‘the world’s only consulting detective’? And, what would happen if John wasn’t recovered alive and in one piece…well, Greg sincerely hoped he’d never have to find out.

  
Sherlock had been harsh, cold, and direct, storming into Greg’s office out of the blue 4 days ago, despite having been legally dead for two years.

  
He actually suspected that Sherlock had been panicked and scared, but he did a pretty good job and covering it with a mask of fury and determination, being a right bastard to anyone who got in his  
way.

  
He had attempted to shove Greg’s angry and shocked questions aside, John had been abducted by an unknown party and he was demanding ‘Scotland Yard’s full concentration on the matter’.

  
He was a whirlwind of activity, a dead man appearing almost from thin air to the alarm of his colleagues; Greg Lestrade was stunned by life’s sudden increase in velocity with the reintroduction of Sherlock Holmes. It was like a damned surprise tornado, Greg was mentally winded and overwhelmed for a full two minutes before he came to his senses and managed to shout Sherlock into submission to slow him down, get him to start making sense and explain what the bloody hell was going on.

  
Sherlock had then seemed to deflate slightly, and, his voice low and urgent, he asked Lestrade to listen to him, he insisted that there was not much time, but he promised to explain later.

  
His almost desperate body language sealed the deal for Greg, and just like that, the game was back on.

  
The next three days had passed in a flurry of activity, but the more of Sherlock that he saw, the more concerned the D.I. became. His thought patterns and actions seemed erratic, he was extremely on edge.

  
Sherlock had been unpredictable and irritable at best before his ‘suicide’, but now…now he was positively volatile, aggressive even. It reminded Greg of the past, as if he had regressed back to the version of himself that he had been before John came into his life…but worse.

  
If you asked Greg (not that anybody ever did) Sherlock was behaving like he had spent the last two years living with wolves, and had forgotten how to be human.

  
Several times during the course of the investigation, Greg had felt so disorientated that he had jumped at the sound of Sherlock’s voice or had felt a strong urge to touch the man to make sure that he was real. But Sherlock’s prickly and unstable demeanour made him think better of it.

  
Being shocked and confused was becoming a running theme in his life at the moment.

  
He sighed for what felt like the millionth time that day, glancing reluctantly at the clock; half an hour had passed since his conversation with Sally, had it really been that long? Maybe his brain was taken micro-naps; he’d seen a documentary about them.

  
Enough, he finally decided, was enough. Dimmock could take over for a shift and give his team a break, there was no way he was giving up; John was his mate, but god, he needed to sleep.

  
Back clicking ominously as he got up (another trip to the physio must be imminent, that was just what he needed), he stood right in front of Sherlock, and got absolutely no response.

  
“Sherlock?” Greg questioned cautiously, waving his hand in front of his face. Not even a twitch.

  
He was either so entrenched in his damn mind palace that he couldn’t (or chose not to) hear a thing, or, the bastard had actually fallen asleep, standing up no less.

  
“Sherlock? Hey, Sherlock,” Greg called, less gently, snapping his fingers next to the man’s ear. Nothing.

  
Frustrated, Greg reached out to shake his shoulder, his hand only just brushing the fabric of his posh suit, before life sprang back into his features and he cried out in angry alarm, in what sounded like…what was that? Russian?

  
He seized Greg’s wrist and twisted it, spraining it painfully in one fluid motion before Lestrade could process a damn thing.

  
Greg automatically hunched over, cradling his injured wrist and spitting out a string of curses, before confronting the detective;

  
“Sherlock! Argh, damn it Sherlock, what the _hell_?”

  
“Lestrade?” Sherlock questioned, as if he were as surprised as Greg was, and definitely as irritated, like he had any right to be.

  
“What were you thinking?” Sherlock admonished as if it was his own fault that he’d attacked him.

  
“What was- What was _I_ thinking? What the hell were _you_ thinking, you nutter? You nearly broke my damn wrist!” He spluttered in response, voice rising steadily, glaring straight back at the furious and a little dazed detective, feeling more than a little pissed off himself.

  
“I could have ki-” Sherlock stopped himself abruptly, thinking better of it and took a moment. Actually it was strange; he did look a bit shaken.

  
Then his eyes narrowed again and he opened his mouth, probably, Greg assumed, to rip him to shreds with a clinical deduction, but before either of them could speak; the door burst open to reveal a flash of curly dark hair and with a hurried;

  
“Sir, I’ve got something!” Then Sally was disappearing back into the fray, seemingly re-energised by her discovery.

  
Sherlock, typically, darted after her without another glance at Greg, who, cursing at his rapidly swelling wrist, hurried after them, _‘I’m getting too old for this shit’_ he thought to himself.

  
The three of them stared at Sally’s computer screen as she rewound the CCTV tape back to the important part, Sherlock tapping his fingers impatiently. Greg turned to him, curious;

  
“When did you learn to speak Russian?”

  
To his surprise Sherlock didn’t call him an idiot or boast about his linguistic prowess;

  
“ _Serbian,_ ” he corrected tersely, and when Greg went to question him further he shot him a warning look that clearly said; leave it.

  
“Here,” exclaimed Sally, “Look, there, on the footpath,” she continued, pointing at the blurry image.

  
Sherlock squinted at the monitor, the recording showed a street, a few miles west of Baker Street, where a man was wandering somewhat unsteadily down the footpath.

  
“That’s him, definitely John,” he stated with confidence, he would recognise that limp anywhere, the limp that he had _cured_ , that _should.not.exist_. Why was John limping again? Had it taken that short a time for the lack of action, lack of excitement to affect John, the adrenaline junkie that he was, that profoundly? Well, he’d have to fix that.

  
“Christ, he’s completely pissed,” Lestrade interjected unnecessarily, as on the screen John wobbled his way across London, as far away from 221B Baker Street as he could get.

  
“ _Of course_ ,” Sherlock muttered absentmindedly, of course John was drunk, it made perfect sense. This explained why the CCTV recordings in a five mile radius around the flat two hours earlier on the  
tape showed no sign of him. John had stopped to visit a pub.

  
Stupid! He’d been so stupid, how had he not seen this earlier? He’d lived with the man, known him well enough to know that, when angry John Watson has a tendency to storm out, and either stay with a friend, or return late, intoxicated.

  
He should have known this, he should have accounted for this, he’d wasted three days over this one detail, he knew too well; so much could happen in three days.

  
John could be dead by now, because of this mistake, because of _his_ mistake.

  
How ironic, John could be dead and it would be his fault, after everything.

  
It had only taken two years for his memory of John to fade.

  
“Wait, Sherlock, look; what’s that? Sally, rewind the tape,” Lestrade called, refocusing his attention. It happened very quickly, it was impressive that Donovan had even caught it in the first place. A shadow appears onscreen, one man, Sherlock determines, accosts John and pulls him backwards into an alleyway where the streetlights no not reach.

  
One second, on hours of film. They had been so close to missing it entirely. Pacing in frustration at the lack of useable data, he vented, snarling at the room;

  
“This solves nothing. It is absolutely worthless; all it does is confirm what we already know.” Sgt Donovan shot him a nasty look in response, and hit fast forward;

  
“About 20 minutes later, a van pulls out of the alleyway, heading south…”

  
“The registration plate,” he cuts her off urgently, his gaze intense, “Do you have it?” He needed to cut out the time wasted and get to the important parts; Donovan smirked at him infuriatingly tapping away at the keys,

  
“I can do you one better than that, _mate_ ,” she quipped sarcastically, but he had no time for her nonsense, “I can give you the address of the guy, the idiot used a rental, and he filed a residential address with the company,” she finished victoriously; finally, they had a fucking break.

  
A beat passed as she looked at the screen, Sherlock immediately detected from her body language that this new information was not good news, Lestrade was still looking pleased with himself as Sherlock made a bee-line for the computer, and frowned.

  
Lestrade finally seemed to cotton on that something wasn’t right,

  
“You have the address right? We do have the address?” He repeated himself annoyingly, his voice starting to grate on Sherlock’s nerves.

  
“Yes Sir,” Donovan confirmed, “But there’s a problem…”

 

~

 

As Greg gave his orders, a new surge of energy hit NSY as his people prepared for the operation to extract John, however he noticed the opposite sort of reaction in Sherlock.

  
If anything, he appeared to succumb to exhaustion, relief hitting him hard, it was possible he was in shock, delayed shock; was that a thing that happened?

  
Approaching the younger man, though Greg was careful not to touch him (he needed his right wrist, thank you very much, it was a good thing he wasn’t left handed, judging by the state of his left one), he looked at him in concern.

  
“We found him, Sherlock, and we’re going to bring him home, okay?” Greg tried to reassure him without sounding patronising (he failed), when Sherlock just regarded him with a tired expression, he decided to push his luck.

  
“Now, I’m letting you in on this one, you can be there with us, but it’s our operation, and you’re staying outside,” he said, aiming for commanding. He was secretly starting to think that Sherlock perhaps not being on the top of his game right now is a blessing.

  
“Detective Inspector,” Sherlock begins, rolling the words around in his mouth, it was never a good sign when he was ‘Detective Inspector’;

  
“John is being held in what Donovan described as a ‘minor gang headquarters’ (both he and Greg new full well that that was a bit of an exaggeration), and you expect me to simply _wait in the car_?” he questioned disbelievingly, but there was a dangerous edge to his voice that Greg didn’t like.

  
“Sherlock,” He placated, “Look, we have no idea what condition John is in, no obvious motive for the attack and no idea what’s waiting for us in there. I’m sorry, but you know I can’t just let you join the strike team,” Greg suddenly had a bit of a realisation;

  
“You’re…you’re not even officially alive again, are you?” He couldn’t believe it (well, actually he really could), it was such a damn Sherlock thing to do, how the hell was he supposed to explain to his superiors that he’d been working with a dead man if something went wrong? They’d think he was mental.

  
He stared at the detective, who scowled and mumbled something that sounded vaguely like ‘not exactly’, Jesus Christ.

  
But Sherlock straightened himself and looked Greg right in the eye. Greg hadn’t been prepared for what he saw there, unguarded; guilt, guilt and a little bit of desperation. It was so honest (Greg actually did know when the bastard was trying to manipulate him…most of the time, but although he was sure he’d claim to be later, he wasn’t now) that it gave him pause.

  
“This is my fault, Lestrade, let me fix it.”

  
He contemplated him for a moment, then closed his eyes, _‘forgive me for this’_ he thought before speaking;

  
“Sherlock, honestly mate, from the sounds of it, he was pretty bloody furious with you the last time he saw you, and; well, look at it from his point of view, the same day that you come back into his life is the exact same day he gets bloody kidnapped –you’re still sure there’s no connection between you and the group?-” He triple checks

  
“None,” Sherlock mumbles, he doesn’t know, and Greg knows that he hates not knowing.

  
“He hasn’t had to deal with this sort of shit for two years, yeah? Given all of that, and whatever else he’s been through in the last 4 days…well,” there’s an uncomfortable pause, “Do you really think he’s going to want you to be the first person he sees?”

  
Sherlock stiffens a bit and Greg winces internally, that probably stung a bit, he hopes he sounded convincing because honestly he doesn’t believe a word of it himself, but he needs it done by the book on this one, and he needs them both alive.

  
Sherlock isn’t looking at him, and he hates himself for being relieved when he nods slowly, and trails after him, remaining; slumped, in the back seat (Sherlock always had hated riding in the back of a squad car, Greg supposed that it reminded him of other times he had been in one that he’d rather forget), when they arrive.

 

~

 

Sherlock bides his time as he watches Lestrade and the rest of those idiots prepare (could they possibly move any slower?) to storm the building, which looks like an innocent little town house. He’s a little insulted that Lestrade thought he would be so easily dissuaded, regardless of whether John does actually want to see him or not, that wasn’t important.

  
Maybe after this Lestrade will assume that all of the fear on his part has been part of the act and write it off, then no one need know about any genuine emotion Sherlock may, or may not have expressed.

  
Honestly it is not a priority right now for John to be pleased to see him, for that to even be a possibility, he must first be alive.

  
He did not spend two years wiping every last trace of Moriarty’s network from the face of the earth to save John’s life only for him to go and get himself killed the second he returned, and by an imbicile no less.

  
Losing John…he swallowed the lump in his throat, would be…unacceptable.

  
What is bothering him the most about John’s kidnapper is the fact that he legitimately has no idea who he (statistically more likely, and the height of the shadow supports this conclusion) is. It is far too much of a co-incidence for John to be targeted immediately after his return, but he wasn’t lying to Lestrade, he has no connection to this particular group. They are petty thugs, not even a proper gang, with no affiliation with the late Jim Moriarty, not something he would usually concern himself with.

  
So the kidnapper is just using the house as a base, there was only a visual on one person from the CCTV footage when John was overpowered. Given that between overpowering John and making his escape, a full 17 minutes elapsed, there was no getaway driver, so it is likely that he is working alone.

  
He desperately hopes that the man responsible is not a member of Moriarty’s web. If he is, then that means that Sherlock had missed one, and where there is one, there are always others.

  
If so...The amount of effort, the amount of blood on his hands, John’s grief and two years of his life could all have been for nothing.

  
But if so, why not just assassinate John, Lestrade and Mrs Hudson and be done with it as Moriarty’s ‘contract’ with his snipers had intended?

  
Why make a mess of kidnapping him and then not covering your tracks? And why had there been no threats, no ransom, or contact of any kind?

  
If this man really was part of the network, then how had he slipped through Sherlock’s net? Especially as all of the evidence so far pointed to him being a complete idiot. How could someone be so clever but yet so stupid at the same time?

  
Sherlock quickly ducked his head, feigning a defeated posture as Sally Donovan walked past Lestrade’s car. He saw her pause out of the corner of his eye, and if she was any other person (except perhaps Anderson), he might have thought she looked concerned.

  
Whilst he was looking down, Sherlock’s left hand caught his attention, and for a second his mind went completely blank.

  
He hadn’t even noticed the calluses on his hand softening and receding. He stared intently at his fingertips, it had taken him years to build up those calluses, hours, days, weeks spent with his violin merely an extension of himself; how he loved that instrument

  
But now the calluses were completely gone, and he hadn’t even noticed

For some reason the loss hit him harder than he could have anticipated, it was such a minor detail, trivial, really in the grand scheme of things. The matter was insignificant, he insisted to himself, he had to remain logical; he needed to focus on John.

  
But it preoccupied him, and he fixated his anger on it, curling his hand into a fist.

  
It was just another element of his life that Moriarty had taken from him, just another reminder that the consulting criminal had won. Sherlock was breathing heavily now, letting his anger roll over him in waves.

  
He had taken his work from him, taken his reputation, his friends, his blood; taken _two years_ of his life from him. Now he had even taken playing the violin from him (albeit temporarily); he had burnt the heart out of him.

 _  
Fuck that_ , he could keep all that, it could burn in hell, right along with the man himself, but he could not have, he would not let anyone, take John Hamish Watson from him.

  
After all that the last two years had thrown at him, every man he had killed, every wound he had suffered and every scar he had gained, he would be damned if he was going to let anything happen to John.

  
He certainly wasn’t going to just sit here and watch Scotland Yard’s _finest_ piss about wasting time whilst every second ticking past John remained a hostage –he reached under the seat and gripped the butt of Lestrade’s spare handgun- He’d had it.

  
Sherlock’s vision was narrowed, focusing on the door across the street, striding deliberately across the pavement, the Yard’s entire operation pushed to the periphery of his senses; he made a bee-line for the target.

 

~

 

In hindsight, Greg probably should have known better, probably shouldn’t have fallen for Sherlock’s defeated submission act. But he hadn’t had any practise with his tricks over the past two years, plus it had been a BAFTA worthy performance. So, he was taken completely off guard when half-way through organising a strike party, he turns around to see Sherlock Holmes stalking with malicious intent through the police barrier.

 

“Shit,” Greg cursed, as he rushed to intercept the man, raising a hand to Sally to let him handle it.

  
As he got closer, Sherlock’s expression made him hesitate, the younger man wasn’t just angry, oh no, he was well past that, his body language all radiated intense concentration, but the look in his eyes was simply murderous.

  
Sherlock was propelling himself forward very fast, almost seeming to glide, and he needed more time than he had to calm him down, and if he was completely honest with himself, he doubted that it was even possible at this stage.

  
“Sherlock, Sherlock what are you doing?” Greg asked, as if the situation wasn’t agonisingly clear to him, falling into step with the detective, jogging a little to keep up

  
Sherlock just cocked his... _Greg’s_...gun in response. Oh this was not good.

  
All Lestrade’s orders (mostly pleas) had no effect, though Sherlock had rarely listened to him on a good day, so he didn’t know why he was surprised. He wasn’t sure if Sherlock could even hear him, not even breaking his stride.

  
Pausing on the threshold, Sherlock turned to him.

  
“Sherlock, I can’t let you-” But Sherlock wasn’t listening;

  
“Don’t try to stop me.”

  
His tone brokered no argument, Greg received the message loud and clear, his wrist throbbing in reminder; Sherlock didn’t even need to say it, the _‘I don’t want to hurt you but I absolutely will if necessary,’_ was heavily implied.

  
For a few seconds, Greg had no response to that, and Sherlock turned back to the door.

  
“Wait!” he called urgently and Sherlock’s head snapped around impatiently, his whole frame practically vibrating with tension as adrenaline flooded his system.

  
By this point, Greg was well aware that attempting to stop Sherlock was pointless, but at least he could attempt some last minute damage control.

  
He couldn’t afford casualties, and for the first time he really worried that perhaps Sally had been right; who knew what Sherlock Holmes was capable of in this moment.  
But he did know that he never in his life wanted to have to work a crime scene that Sherlock had _created_.

  
“Just,” Greg lowered his voice, “Be careful _please_ , for God’s sake Sherlock. Don't do anything stupid.”

  
Sherlock considered it, reading between the lines to what Greg was really trying to say; _‘No one needs to die today.’_

  
He looked Gregory Lestrade straight in the eye as he whispered;

  
“No promises.”

  
And then he was gone.

  
If John wasn't still alive...then god help them.

 

~

 

The door swung open until it ‘thunked’ quietly against the wall in an anticlimactic sort of way.

 

_Finally._

  
In the doorway, appeared Sherlock bloody Holmes, of all people, he was very calm, but it was a dangerous sort of calm.

  
His eyes were hard in a way that John hadn’t seen since Afghanistan.

  
In seconds, Sherlock’s mind had assessed the situation, eyes flickering all over the room.

  
Assess the threat.

Locate the exits.

Identify weapons.

Secure John.

It was automatic.

  
The room was small, and mostly empty with frankly hideous floral wallpaper. It contained a chair (currently occupied), a window and under it a radiator, and, zip-tied to it an exceptionally pissed off (but thankfully unharmed) John Watson.

  
It became tangibly easier to breathe.

  
“It’s about bloody time!” John huffed, stoic in the face of it all. But no, it was more than that, the Doctor wasn’t remotely afraid, he actually seemed…well, annoyed.

  
“You!”

  
Sherlock turned his attention to the somewhat gangly young man in the corner who had been the one to abduct John;

_  
First Mistake._

  
He also happened to be pointing a 9mm handgun at Sherlock's chest.

 _  
Second mistake._  
  
  
The man’s posture was aiming for commanding, but was let down by the fact that he was sweating nervously. He'd probably overheard a bit of the commotion downstairs.

  
“Alright then?” Sherlock casually threw back at John, maintaining eye contact with the kid.

  
“Oh, you know, knee’s a bit stiff, I’m handcuffed to a radiator, can’t complain.” His blogger quipped back, adopting their usual back and forth.

  
“Shut up!” The boy shouted a touch manically, the gun wheeling violently between them, before settling back on Sherlock, his expression wild.

  
John just seemed generally unimpressed with the whole situation, understandably.

  
Sherlock’s countenance was bored, but his eyes were piercing.

  
“How did you get past the guards?” The hid asked suspiciously. He received a blank stare in return.

  
“They weren’t your guards,” Sherlock stated in a monotone, causing the boy to hesitate, his bluff called,“In fact you don’t even own this building, you are not affiliated with them in any way,” he added, absolutely no emotion in his voice.

  
The boy changed tactics;

  
“I see you got my message,” a hint of arrogance in his tone.  
  
  
“No.” Sherlock shut him down, “Are you ready to go?” he asked John sarcastically as the kid blanched in surprise, before angrily recovering;

  
“You’re lying! You wouldn’t be here otherwise,” he insisted like a petulant child, but he was a petulant child with a loaded gun.

  
He was growing more panicked by the minute: _unpredictable._

  
John attempts to reason with him;

  
“Look, I told you he wouldn’t,” John was extremely exasperated, muttering; “Why does no one ever listen to me?” under his breath.

  
The boy was shaking his head, refusing to believe that his plan hadn’t worked, that it was falling apart. He squirmed under the intensity of Sherlock’s stare.

  
Sherlock’s patience was running out;

  
“John, care to explain?”

  
John sighed;

  
“He’s been leaving coded messages in the newspapers for you, from Moriarty, I told him that you don’t read the damn things, not that the messages made sense in the first place mind you, but he’s been watching too many bad cop shows.”

  
“Moriarty?” Sherlock scoffed, “You have nothing to do with James Moriarty.” It was not a question and Sherlock still maintained his cold stare (John almost felt sorry for the boy, he’d been on the receiving end of that look from both Holmes brothers, but maybe he’d have been more sympathetic if he joints weren’t screaming at him).

  
A pained moan drifted into the room from behind Sherlock, who completely ignores it without blinking.

  
Hearing the noise, the kid pales a bit in alarm, and attempts to peer behind Sherlock into the hallway anxiously for a moment before he rallies, making an effort to sound taunting.

  
“You don’t even know who I am, do you?” He askes smugly, (as if he was remotely important) pleased at the idea that he had beaten Sherlock Holmes.

  
“It took you 4 days to use my messages to find me, I took your sidekick from right under your nose (“Sidekick,” John muttered darkly in the background) and you have no idea!”

  
To the casual observer, Sherlock appeared to be his usual arrogant and disinterested self, but John figured he knew how to read the minute details of his (former) friend’s face better than most, and to him, Sherlock looked like he was deciding just where exactly to snap his neck.

  
There was a pause and Sherlock gave an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh, and John relaxed, he personally loved this particular type of Holmesian drama, because it almost always preceded a particularly entertaining deduction.

  
And so it began;

  
“Your name is Travis Tyler; four days ago you hired a van, which you then used to abduct a very drunk John Watson. You got lucky, you never would have been able to overpower him otherwise (this elicited a smirk from John) and it took you 17 minutes to subdue him as it was. You registered your real name and this address with the rental company, that’s how I was able to find you. I don’t read the newspapers; Boring.”

  
He rattled of the facts rapid fire, his face a blank mask, unenthused, like he was deducing a client whose case was only a four.

  
Now however, the kid was really panicking, his hands shaking on the gun, which he desperately gestures at John with, John eyes the weapon warily.

  
Tyler was losing control of the situation, and he knew it.

  
“You destroyed everything!” Tyler was furious again, pointing accusingly at Sherlock with his other hand (probably not a wise move whilst holding a gun, in John’s experience),

  
“His empire, everything he created.”

  
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at Tyler, but the kid wasn’t finished yet, eyes glinting;

  
“So imagine how pleased I was when I found out you were alive! That it was you, hiding in the shadows, all along. It was then that I knew what I had to do, I knew I could carry out the contract, and make you pay for what you did.”

  
Damn, the kid was really bitter, Sherlock tensed visibly at the mention of this ‘contract’ thing, John could practically see the cogs in Sherlock’s mind turning, the consulting detective wasn’t even trying to hide his contempt anymore (though it’s debateable whether he actually had been in the first place).

  
“You are not part of Jim’s network,” Sherlock stated, deliberately referring to Moriarty in a familiar way to bait Tyler, and it was very effective.

  
“No? Hah, you missed one Mister Holmes, I heard whispers about the contract here and there, everybody did, but no one ever thought…” he gloated, “My cousin worked at the docks, collecting crates from Belfast, from the consulting criminal himself,” his expression dropped; “Until you shut everything down.”

  
“Seaforth docks, Liverpool,” Sherlock practically spat out, proving that he had forgotten nothing. Then he drawled, “From the man himself? Hmm. There was a very tenuous link there, a bit of a leap to call it part of the network,” he tutted, but before he could continue John interjected;

  
“Listen to him Sherlock! He sounds like a damn Scooby Doo villain for christsake, you see what I’ve had to put up with?” John snapped.

  
Tyler, enraged, spun around and pistol whipped John right in the face, screaming at him to shut up.

  
Sherlock’s eyes flash in anger.

_  
Third mistake._

  
Lestrade chose that moment to come up behind Sherlock, distracting Tyler for a moment, causing the gun to waver as he turned away from John.

  
Apparently that was more than enough time for Sherlock to disarm him, one second the kid had the gun pointed at Greg’s head, then John blinked, and Sherlock had Tyler pinned against the wall, arm twisted cruelly behind his back, gun firmly pressed against the kid’s brainstem.

  
“Sherlock,” Lestrade cautioned very carefully, inching towards them, surprising John with his uncertainty.

  
Then again, Sherlock wasn’t handing over the perp and swanning off like he usually did (had?). He still had the gun to the base of the whimpering kid’s skull.  
More than that, he looked like he might actually do it; his finger was tight on the trigger, just a bit of pressure, a few millimetres and… well.

  
“Sherlock, let it go,” Lestrade urged him nervously, exchanging a glance with John, which was worrying, Lestrade really didn’t trust Sherlock with this.

  
Eventually though, Lestrade’s words seemed to have the desired effect.

  
Sherlock lent forward and hissed something into Tyler’s ear that he could only just make out;

  
“ _The contract ends with you._ ”

  
Then, with a flick, Sherlock dislocated the kid’s shoulder and released him to melt into a pathetic heap for Lestrade to arrest.

  
John may not have understood what Sherlock had said, but the words were chilling all the same.

  
“Cheers,” He grunted as Sherlock cut the zip ties from his wrists. They were damn tight, and he had nearly wriggled out of them but he’d made a bit of a mess of his wrists in the process. Sherlock stares at the ribbons of John's flesh.

  
The detective pulls him to his feet a little roughly (were there any of his muscles that _weren’t_ screaming in pain?), gives him the once over to assure himself that John was okay and then just stalks out of the room.

 

~

 

By the time John had convinced his knees to come around (he didn’t think he’d been so uncomfortable in his damn life, except admittedly when he was shot), Greg had returned after disposing of Tyler.

  
He looked shaken.

  
“John. Shit. I can't tell you how good it is to see you. Thank god you’re alright. C’mon, let’s get you out of here,” Greg helped him down the stairs as his limbs continued to try and figure out how to move again.

  
When they got to a narrowish corridor that lead to the front door, John stopped.

  
“Bloody hell Greg, what happened?!”

  
There were at least two heavy looking blokes being treated by paramedics for what looked suspiciously like gunshot wounds.

  
And there was a stain on the wall closest to them that, from John’s experience with these things, indicated that someone’s head had collided with it…more than once.  
  
  
Greg looked at him meaningfully and said, deliberately louder than was necessary, something suggesting an internal fight had broken out amongst the gang members.

  
It was all white noise to John as he remembered that hard look in Sherlock’s eyes.

  
Once they were clear of the building and the medics had patched up John’s wrists a bit (Lestrade’s arm seemed to be a bit strapped up as well), he turned to Greg again;

  
“What really happened?” he asked, although he suspected he knew what the answer would be, he was having a hard time believing that Sherlock was the ruthless person who had ‘dealt with’ those guards. It had been pretty brutal.

  
Greg eyed him wearily.

  
“I swear to god, I only gave him an eight minute head start before I came in after him, then I waited just outside the door until he gave me the signal,” Lestrade glanced around, just to make sure no one was within earshot,

  
“There were 6 men in the building, not including you and Tyler when he went in. Three of them are in hospital –one critical- one’s in custody; a bit bruised, and the other two hightailed it from what we can tell. I don’t blame them.”

  
“Christ.”

  
Lestrade nodded slowly;

  
“He was frighteningly efficient. Of course, being officially dead, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll be able to pin it on a brawl,” Lestrade paused, “Look, mate, can you please let me know what the hell is  
going on?”

  
“As soon as I know myself,” John promised.

 

~

 

By the time Greg had dropped him off, with a plan to meet for a pint at the weekend, John was absolutely knackered and in desperate need of a good shower.

  
The better part of four days zip tied to a radiator with a lunatic was enough to do anyone’s head in, at least he’d let him go to the bathroom.

  
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, he hadn’t even been living back at Baker Street again for a full year before all this lot happens.

  
The last time he’d come home to find a dead man in his (their?) living-room. He’d been so angry that he didn’t care; he didn’t care how Sherlock had managed to trick him, and he hadn’t wanted to hear any of Sherlock’s excuses.

  
He just hadn’t wanted to know about it, it had been too much.

  
Sherlock had stayed rooted to the spot as John had flung barbs, he didn’t remember most of it, but he’d told Sherlock to fuck off and not come back, when he hadn’t; John had.

  
Now he’d had four days to think about it, and he was still very much pissed off, and he would be for a while. But for two years he would have given anything to have him back, for his best friend not to be dead, he’d begged with his headstone for him not to be dead.

  
And now he wasn’t.

  
Sherlock had done the impossible.  
  
  
Sherlock was an absolute bastard for doing what he did, and John was bloody furious with him, but at the same time he was so fucking thrilled because Sherlock Holmes was _alive_.

  
He looked up the stairs to the flat, he could hear someone moving around, and he smiles.  
  
  
Because despite everything, he did want to know how he’d pulled it off, why, what the bloody ‘contract’ thing meant and where he’d been all this time.

  
Sure, Sherlock Holmes was definitely no angel, but he could perform miracles.

 


End file.
